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Comment on: “Preventing chemotherapy-induced alopecia: a prospective clinical trial on the efficacy and safety of a scalp-cooling system in early breast cancer patients treated with anthracyclines”

British Journal of Cancer volume 121, page 805 (2019)Cite this article

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We have read, with great interest, the recent paper titled “Preventing chemotherapy-induced alopecia: a prospective clinical trial on the efficacy and safety of a scalp-cooling system in early breast cancer patients treated with anthracyclines” by Munzone et al.,1 which evaluated the effect of a scalp-cooling system on chemotherapy-induced alopecia (CIA). We would like to highlight additional points of discussion regarding this study.

The authors evaluated the concordance between patient and nurse/physician Dean’s score and reported that Cohen’s kappa was 0.41, indicating moderate agreement; however, 53.8% of patients evaluated their hair loss at ≤50%, whereas 79.8% of the medical staff evaluated patient hair loss at ≤50%. There was a significant difference between the patient and medical staff evaluations (p < .001). This indicates that the medical staff underestimated the CIA. The report of moderate agreement is encouraging; however, we believe that the authors should have been mindful of the potential for missing patient distress.

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References

  1. Munzone E., Bagnardi V., Campennì G., Mazzocco K., Pagan E., Tramacere A. et al. Preventing chemotherapy-induced alopecia: a prospective clinical trial on the efficacy and safety of a scalp-cooling system in early breast cancer patients treated with anthracyclines. Br. J. Cancer https://doi.org/10.1038/s41416-019-0520-8 (2019).

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Author contributions

J.K., K.K., M.K. and Y.O. made substantial contributions to study conception and design. J.K. and K.K. were involved in drafting the paper. All authors contributed to and approved all drafts.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Nursing Science, Graduate School of Biomedical and Health Sciences, Hiroshima University, Minami-ku, Hiroshima, 734-8553, Japan

    Jun Kako & Kohei Kajiwara

  2. Faculty of Nursing, National Defense Medical College, Saitama, 359-8513, Japan

    Masamitsu Kobayashi

  3. Community Health Nursing, National Defense Medical College, Saitama, 359-8513, Japan

    Yasufumi Oosono

Authors
  1. Jun Kako
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  2. Kohei Kajiwara
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  3. Masamitsu Kobayashi
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  4. Yasufumi Oosono
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jun Kako.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Ethical approval and consent to participate

This project did not constitute research. Therefore, ethics committee approval was not required.

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None.

Data availability

Not Applicable.

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Kako, J., Kajiwara, K., Kobayashi, M. et al. Comment on: “Preventing chemotherapy-induced alopecia: a prospective clinical trial on the efficacy and safety of a scalp-cooling system in early breast cancer patients treated with anthracyclines”. Br J Cancer 121, 805 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41416-019-0576-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41416-019-0576-5

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